BIRDS OF PREY. ya, 
experience as a falconer with birds of this very species 
enabled him fully to confirm my estimate, though, as 
he says, it is difficult to conceive the lungs of any bird 
lasting through it. Of course this rapidity of motion 
could not be maintained for long, but that it is actually 
attained I have not the shadow of a doubt. 
It was a strange idea that the peregrine killed 
or disabled its prey by a blow with its breast; but 
this is such an evident absurdity that it has long 
been discarded. Alexander Wilson thus alludes to this 
opinion :— 
“From the best sources of information we learn that 
this species is uncommonly bold and powerful, that it 
darts on its prey with astonishing velocity, and that it 
strikes with its formidable feet, permitting the duck to 
fall previously to securing it. The circumstance of the 
hawk never carrying off the duck on striking it, has 
given rise to the belief of that service being performed 
by means of the breast, which vulgar opinion has armed 
with a projecting bone adapted to the purpose. But 
this cannot be the fact, as the breast-bone of the bird 
does not differ from that of others of the same tribe, 
and would not admit of so violent a concussion.” 
In Montagu’s Ornithological Dictionary,* an ac- 
count is quoted from a writer in a popular periodical 
of a peregrine pursuing a razor-bill, and stating that 
“instead of assaulting, as wsual, with the death pounce 
from the beak, he seized it by the head with both his 
claws.” This “as usual,’ is undoubtedly a mistake, for 
the stroke is given with the foot. 
Byron was no better ornithologist than the writer 
* Second edition, 1831. 
